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McLeish gets PR job with former Tory chairman

HENRY MCLEISH, the former first minister, has got a job working as a public relations consultant with a firm run by the former chairman of the Scottish Conservatives.

McLeish, who was forced to quit as first minister after he admitting to wrongly claiming more than £30,000 worth of expenses for his constituency office in Glenrothes, has begun work for Halogen Communications, an Edinburgh-based firm run by Raymond Robertson, the former Scottish Office minister.

Robertson regularly pilloried McLeish when they were both in frontline politics, once claiming that “everything Henry McLeish has touched since becoming first minister has ended up a disaster”.

Industry insiders believe McLeish will earn up to £700 a day providing advice to clients — who include the Japanese government, Sainsbury’s Bank and Ben & Jerry’s, the ice-cream manufacturer — on subjects such as the inner workings of the Labour party and how to deal with being under the intense